The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers & Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) has is­sued an of­fi­cial state­ment, ex­press­ing con­cern over what it says is the “mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the front page” of a dai­ly news­pa­per, in what it de­scribes as “wan­ton dis­re­gard for copy­right in­fringe­ment”.

The full text of the state­ment is­sued by the TTP­BA, fol­lows…

TTP­BA URGES CIT­I­ZENS TO BE­WARE OF FAKE NEWS

The Trinidad & To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers & Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) again ob­serves the wan­ton dis­re­gard for copy­right in­fringe­ment on so­cial me­dia plat­forms with the shame­ful du­pli­ca­tion and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the front page of one of the dai­ly news­pa­pers dat­ed Sun­day 2nd Au­gust 2020.

Not on­ly is there a le­gal in­fringe­ment with the use of the news­pa­per’s mast­head, but the work of the in­de­pen­dent poll­ster Nigel Hen­ry, has been al­tered by the change in the chart de­pict­ing the re­sponse to a ques­tion.

This there­fore rais­es the oth­er scourge, that of the em­ploy­ment of Fake News as a tool to in­flu­ence the views of those who so opt to use so­cial me­dia as a source of in­for­ma­tion.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic are there­fore be­ing ad­vised to be par­tic­u­lar­ly cir­cum­spect with re­gard to use of the so­cial me­dia con­tent and to ques­tion the source of the in­for­ma­tion in every case.

And it is this ques­tion­ing of the source that is egre­gious­ly wrong, and par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing to the TTP­BA, as the im­agery of a rep­utable dai­ly news­pa­per has been used to con­fuse the pub­lic.

The Copy­right Act 8 of 1997 makes it clear in

- Sec­tion 5(i) that the works of lith­o­g­ra­phy (news­pa­pers) are pro­tect­ed.

- Sec­tion 8(i) the own­er of copy­right shall the ex­clu­sive right to au­tho­rise, re­pro­duc­tion of the work; adap­ta­tion, arrange­ment or oth­er trans­for­ma­tion of the work.

- Sec­tion 9 (2) (e) ex­press­ly states if no au­tho­ri­sa­tion was sought from the own­er of the copy­right, the ma­te­r­i­al may not be used “...where re­pro­duc­tion would con­flict with a nor­mal ex­ploita­tion of the work or would oth­er­wise un­rea­son­ably prej­u­dice the le­git­i­mate in­ter­ests of the own­er of the copy­right."

The role of the Po­lice in work­ing with the soft­ware plat­forms to track down and elim­i­nate this prob­lem can al­so not be over­looked.